Drought slashes rice output

Drought slashes rice output

JAKARTA (JP): This year's severe drought has slashed the
country's production of rice, soybeans, mung beans, cassava and
sweet potatoes, but it has not affected the output of corn and
peanuts.

The Central Bureau for Statistics (BPS) announced over the
weekend that the country's unhusked rice production during the
January-August period decreased by 4.35 percent to 38.3 million
tons compared to the same period last year.

Meanwhile, the production of soybeans, according to the
bureau's recent survey, declined by 6.9 percent to 1.1 million
tons, mung beans by 20.2 percent to 157,000 tons, cassava by 9.9
percent to 10.3 million tons and sweet potatoes by 10.4 percent
to 1.3 million tons.

However, the country's output of corn and peanuts increased by
9.2 percent and 1.7 percent respectively to 5.6 millions tons and
487,000 tons during the first eight months of this year.

The BPS said in a press release that its routine agricultural
survey was based on data collected by district administrations.

The bureau noted that this year's drop in rice output resulted
from the failure of crops in 148,500 hectares of rice fields
which had been severely affected by this year's dry spell. The
area of drought-affected fields were 248.6 percent larger than
those in 1993.

It said the average productivity of rice fields in the first
eight months of this year also declined by 0.06 percent to 4.3
tons per hectare over the same period of last year.

The bureau noted that Java remains the main supplier of rice
to the country. Of the 38.3 million tons of the rice output, 60
percent was produced on the island.(rid)